Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels said Thursday the city's budget is on a more fiscally responsible course than earlier years this century that helped create $80 million in debt.

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Mayor Justin Nickels says someone asks him every day what the city is going to do about the mammoth, deteriorating former Mirro cookware plant downtown that closed a decade ago.

Thursday at his annual "Business Roundtable" breakfast was no exception.

"I don't have $6 million in my budget to take it down ... there's not much the city can do," Nickels told a questioner, one of about 100 business and civic leaders in attendance on a glorious, sunny morning at The Club, a couple of hundred yards away from Lake Michigan. ...